In Health
by The Blue Fenix
Summary: Another day, another number. Another night, another nightmare.
1. Chapter 1

In Health

"Mr. Reese, I owe you an explanation. And an apology," Harold Finch said.

_It's funny, how people keep mistaking me for a moral touchstone._ Carter had done it recently, too. Even Fusco. Strangest of all from Harold, who knew well what kind of monster he was harboring. But Reese listened, thought, said the words to make his friend feel better. It was true, too. He was responsible for his own fate, and Jess's. Harold had made the best decisions he could at the time.

In some ways, this should be their hour of triumph. Decima Corporation had been foiled, government goons evaded. Root put away securely. Even the Machine freed from human control, which Reese supposed counted as good news after all it had done for them. But the numbers were gone now, and Reese's function with them. He suggested that Harold could stop giving him quite so much money – he meant any at all, but one step at a time. Harold wouldn't hear of even a reduction in salary.

The jingle of an old-fashioned telephone interrupted them. Both of them looked at the open booth on the corner. Harold grinned like a child on Christmas morning and hurried to answer it. Reese leaned down to pat Bear, hiding a smile of his own.

At the phone Finch scribbled on a note pad he carried with him, said "Thank you," and hung up.

"You never thank it," Reese commented when Finch returned.

"I'm not sure 'it' is the right term," Harold said absently. "Not any more. The Machine also said, be careful. To you, by name."

Reese looked blank. "I guess, that shows a friendly attitude. Thank it for me."

"I knew the Machine could develop a personality," Finch said. "In the past, I had precautions in place to limit that. Since the hard reset, its mind is its own." A few weeks ago in the empty computer room, Harold had talked about the escape of the Machine like a proud father. Now he seemed to wonder if he'd done the right thing.

Reese tapped the pad in Harold's hand. "First things first."

[*]

"Doctor Deborah Robinson," Harold said, taping a photograph to the glass bulletin board in the library. It showed a woman with strong features and copper-penny hair she wore scraped back in a bun. Her heavy-framed glasses didn't suit her. "Geneticist, just coming off a research fellowship at Imperial College in London. Australian. For the last six months she's been working under another grant, doing independent research at a local medical school on data from the Human Genome Project. Her green card gives her a temporary Social Security number, which is how the Machine referred us. Living with a fellow researcher Dr. Terry Forrest, male. Social media suggests he's proposed marriage at least once since they began to co-habitate, no engagement reported."

"Could her trouble be the boyfriend?" Reese knew he had a bias toward that kind of answer. But it was a cliche because it kept happening.

"No criminal record on him." Harold hung another picture. Reese noted this one down as Caucasian male about thirty, brown hair curly, brown eyes. More informally, an average guy with a nose too short for good looks and an amiable expression. "He's an MD too, postdoctoral student on track for research rather than private practice. And this is interesting, changed his name at eighteen. He was born in a commune in Oregon, father not recorded, given the name Terrestrial Spirit of the Eternal Forest. Has a sister – possibly half sister – now named Celeste Sterne for similar reasons."

"Celestial Spirit of the Timeless Stars?" Reese deduced.

"Ageless," Harold said. "In any case, she lives in Ohio and seems not to be involved in this. Forrest and Robinson live quietly in a building with a total of fifteen tenants, most of them long term residents, none with criminal records. Good neighborhood. Because she has independent funding from a private foundation, she teaches no classes at the university and has no direct supervisor. She's more a visiting scholar with lab privileges than anything else. No trouble reported there, either."

"What about her life before she came to New York?" Reese asked.

"Very little comes up on a search. I see no scholarly publications under her name, no formal academic positions apart from the visiting scholar roles here and in London, no record she ever practiced medicine. No living relatives in Australia."

That piqued Reese's instincts. "Sounds like a good cover identity to me."

Harold turned to the nearest computer and rapped several keys. "I did look at students – she's listed on the alumni pages of both her undergraduate and medical schools in Brisbane. Both entries appear to be properly dated, no sign of tampering. If this is a cover, she's been at it continuously since she was about eighteen years old."

_Like you,_ Reese reflected. _Harold Crane-Wren-Finch-etc._ But that didn't matter at the moment. And it qualified the man to spot similar manipulation by other people. "That doesn't sound likely to pose an immediate threat. So I guess we start with basic legwork," Reese said. "Pair their phones, infiltrate their apartment, get a sense of their routine." Harold rarely gave him orders any more, only partner-like suggestions, but Reese had their chain of command clear in his own mind.

Harold nodded. "I'll leave it in your hands."

[*]

It wasn't the worst pain that ever happened to him; not even the worst from torture. The insurgents had been amateurs. They had some idea of a show trial, which ruled out conspicuous things like cutting off his fingers. Two days, not even a day and a half conscious, before Kara and Snow had beaten his location out of someone and freed him. But when he dreamed of torture, that was the session. The cold stone hut, the insurgents clustering around him. Grinning like wolves, and laughing.

Not the worst. But this time the stone hut was bigger, another mattress worth of space. Bodies moved out of his way and he saw why. They needed the extra room because they were doing it to Harold, too.

Awake. Light, space, clean air without the concentrated stench of unwashed … torturers. Better, he had a gun in his hand. He could stop anything that needed stopping. John Reese made himself breathe slowly, two, three. He focused his eyes. The loft. New York. Home, of a sort. Lots of open space and any number of escape routes, through the wide windows. The sun was barely up, but sleep would be unattainable now.

He knew where and when and who and what. And the gun hadn't gone off, it was a neutral temperature in his hand. What he didn't know, and had no one to ask, was whether he'd made a noise coming up out of the dream. Even Bear was with Harold tonight, or he could have told by the dog's reaction.

Hell with it. The loft was surely soundproofed, or someone would have complained by now. Reese got out of bed.

[*]

He strode into the main room of the library like someone ready to attack. Bear whined, confused. Harold, already at his computer table, stared and fumbled to rise.

Seeing him, real and whole, steadied Reese's heartbeat down to normal range. His juggernaut approach slowed, finally stalled. Bear came up to him, a little fearful, and nuzzled his hand. The innocent contact helped. Reese stroked, buried his fingers in the dog's fur.

Harold, also hesitant, came closer. Touching range, but not touching. He knew a little, and had the intelligence to guess more. That saved them the first six questions right there. "Tell me." Harold's voice was shaky.

_If I wasn't going to be honest, why did I come here? _Reese sat down, and said it. Short blunt words, what had really happened and how Harold had fit in the dream-replay. Harold went bone white. He looked twenty years older than Reese, not ten. "How," his voice broke, and he tried again. "How can you stand to let me near you?"

Because Finch was, among other things, attracted to men. And because he'd let slip that he was attracted to Reese. _God, you are innocent._ "There's no comparison. You wanted something," friendly, "consensual. I didn't happen to want to. Which stopped you in your tracks." They didn't usually touch, but Reese put a hand on the other man's arm. "No matter how crazy the dream got, I never once thought of _you_ as an attacker. I was sick because you were hurting and I couldn't help you."

They'd both had their shares of helplessness. Harold sank into another chair close by. He put his hand over Reese's. "Just one question, if you feel comfortable answering." Reese nodded. "Are they all dead?" His voice was shaky but fierce.

"Stanton and Snow came in guns blazing." And found him three-quarters dead, but that was nothing Harold should hear. "Kara was going for leg and gut shots. When the dust settled there were two alive. She gave me her sidearm … therapy, she said." Actually, the other agent's suggested revenge had been considerably more graphic. "I could barely see straight but I did it, double taps to the head. I did feel a little better." The only therapy he'd gotten. CIA covert operations division wasn't known for pampering delicate emotions.

Harold breathed. "I never thought I could hate that woman less. Thank God she was there."

From a man who rarely ventured an 'oh, shoot' it sounded like a real prayer. Reese's eyes were stinging. "Finch," he said roughly, and drew the shorter man forward into an awkward hug. Finch sobbed once and leaned into it.

He trembled like the birds he kept naming himself after. He didn't hug back until Reese squeezed him firmly, and then his touch had something desperate in it. _Oh._ Not a why-not-we're-both-here extension of the partnership, like Kara. Not a friendly but non-committing fling, like Zoe. Harold, if Reese knew anything about the human heart, was in love. He must be insane – wasn't knowing 'exactly everything' about Reese enough warning? – but the emotion was genuine.

Reese could hurt him so very badly. And Harold was too smart to lie to. "I think you're the only person alive I care about." He adjusted so that Finch's head was on his shoulder. "And I still don't know if I can. Not because of bad memories. If I let that kind of thing stop me I'd never leave the damn house. Because it _matters_, whether I mess up our partnership." That was why Finch had turned down his half-addled offer a few months ago. He'd been offering something that had no value to him. Harold refused to agree to that valuation.

"Thank you." Harold's arm tightened on his neck. "That's all I want." His lips brushed Reese's coat.

Bear shoved his big nose in between them, demanding some attention too. They both stroked the dog, and the tension lightened. Harold's eyes were suspiciously pink-rimmed. He wiped his glasses with finicky care as if they'd suddenly gotten covered in dust. "Very well," he said at random. "We'll see how the situation develops." He looked down at the new glasses. "Incidentally. Do you need to implant a tracking device in these?"

Reese's lips curved as he realized he was being teased. "It's handled, thanks."

[*]


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Robinson and Dr. Forrest took the subway to work most days, with a stop along the way at a local coffee shop. Reese was waiting behind a newspaper later that morning. Pictures always missed something. With Forrest it was more maturity than his wide-eyed features conveyed in a still image. He seemed worried. He touched the woman often, a fleeting hand on the elbow or so, as if afraid to let her out of range. With Deborah Robinson it was too much makeup, an all-over mask more typical of a much older woman. Reese glanced down. His phone had paired with both of their targets – as well as the barista and two other random coffee drinkers. He deleted the lock-ons they didn't want with a few touches to his phone screen.

His eyes kept coming back to the bulky leather purse on the woman's shoulder. It swung loosely, when she took her left hand off it, and Reese knew. "She's armed," he told Finch in a whisper. "That, or carrying something else the size and mass of a handgun."

"What about the boyfriend?" Finch said in his earbud.

Forrest wore khakis and a summer-weight linen shirt, no briefcase or backpack. "Not a thing." The combination cut the odds of an abusive-partner scenario close to zero, unless the woman was the abuser. "I'd call her alert but not afraid. The kid's nervous, but I can't pin down why. Doesn't look like he's scanning for threats."

Terry Forrest put his coffee down. He hesitated, then his hand dived into a pants pocket. Reese tensed … but the object was a small box, an inch each way. Forrest offered it, open, a tiny diamond on a ring gleaming inside. The redheaded woman embraced him, in front of everyone, with a deep kiss.

"Negative on threats," Reese said as the coffee house broke into spontaneous applause. "He popped the question. We have a yes."

"Hold off on visiting their apartment," Finch said. "They may decide to go home and celebrate instead of going to work."

Reese nodded, though Harold couldn't see it. "Keeping my distance."

But the couple went on toward the medical school, hand in hand now. In search of friends and co-workers to tell, Reese suspected. He escorted them, at a discreet distance, all the way to one of the research buildings at the medical school and let them disappear into an elevator. He hailed a taxi in front of the building, to save time. A yellow cab darted around a dirty white laundry van and picked him up.

[*]

Twenty minutes later – Reese walked the last block on general principles – he eased back the lock on the door of Deborah and Terry's apartment. An alarm system was turned on, but he'd learned a few new tricks from Harold. The place was roomy for Manhattan, furnished with comfortable chairs and art prints and one full wall of books. Reese did a quick overall sweep – kitchen nook with barstools, pretty good sized bathroom, bedroom with big windows – before focusing on the computers. "Two laptops," he remarked to Harold. "One heavily upgraded for gaming, bet that's his." Reese turned on both to be sure. He inserted what looked like a flash drive into a port on each computer. "Are you in?"

"Working," Harold said absently. He was also following two conversations on the number's and her fiancé's phones. "Yes, apparently he had quite a first-person-shooter habit until about six months ago, in abeyance since then. Probably marking the time they got serious. Emails to and from the sister, not much work material, a modest collection of pornography."

"Grab a copy if there's anything good," Reese suggested. Since Harold could do the computers at long distance far better than he could, he concentrated on elementary audio bugs. Land line, bathroom, bedroom. He located a metal box under the bed on what he took to be Deborah's side. "Hang on." The simple lock yielded at a few second's fiddling. "Gun cleaning kit under the bed, extra rounds. Revolver ammo – she must be old-fashioned. Three-fifty-seven. I knew I liked this girl."

"She has no carry permit from the city or state," Finch responded. Not that permits were easy to come by in New York. "No gun purchases on record for the seven neighboring states. That adds a little weight to your notion of a cover identity."

"It also suggests she knows about the threat," Reese said. They'd already checked criminal records for her as victim or offender.

"I have access to her hard drive," Finch interrupted. "There's a hard-coded partition, guarded by – looks to be a password of at least sixty-four characters. Serious security. But I can also tell it's backed up automatically to a commercial cloud service. I'm going to attack their firewall instead, it may be easier. We were right, she has secrets."

"The gun's not a secret, not from the boyfriend," Reese said thoughtfully. "But something is. Something she's determined not to lose if she loses the laptop – or has to abandon it, cold. Yeah. This _is_ a cover, Finch – and one she can drop at a moment's notice, even after building it for fifteen years. I wonder if she'd try to take him with her."

"I have the directory structure of her cloud backup. Several files are over six gigabytes each. Somehow I don't think she's pirating movies," Harold said. "I think I can – yes. Those files have a quatrenary bit structure. Don't you see? She's a geneticist."

"English, Finch," Reese said, elaborately patient.

"GCTA," was the response. Reese waited. "The four amino acid elements of human DNA – of any kind of DNA," Harold went on. "She has complete genetic codes on someone, several someones. There's no medical reason to do that, Reese. Any human's DNA is over 99 percent identical to anyone else's – why not only study the parts that vary?"

"Because she knows something you don't?" Reese suggested.

Silence. It went on longer than surprise, longer than thinking over a surprise. "Harold?" Reese's voice went up.

"Here," came back reassuringly fast. "Just … I've gotten into the cloud files, I'm looking over some of the smaller ones. I don't know what I'm dealing with here, Mr. Reese."

"Is it about the threat?"

"What? No … at least I don't see how. I need to do some more research, Mr. Reese. There's no use in both of us doubting my sanity."

Reese started shutting down both computers. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Ten."

"I assure you I'm quite safe," Harold said more calmly. "Just … boggled. Keep working the case. In fact, let's not let Dr. Robinson out of our sight. She may be quite an extraordinary individual."


	3. Chapter 3

Reese didn't understand Finch. But that had never slowed him down before. A borrowed set of scrubs and white coat from the intern's locker room gave him free run of the research building in the medical school. He had a custom app on his phone that let him trace both paired phones in real time. He found Deborah and Terry up on the fourth floor in a lab – he assumed it was a lab, there were unidentified machines everywhere – with a full row of windows overlooking the hall. They didn't look very busy to him. Reese supposed people didn't get engaged every day. The hallway was way too public for a stakeout. He confirmed which door was nearest – the main entrance, where they'd gone in this morning – and returned to the locker room for his own clothes.

One-man tailing was a tedious job, but Reese had gotten used to it. They left the lab at six. He was mildly surprised they split up outside the main door. Deborah headed down the street on foot, toward the subway stop. Her fiancé went the other direction, disappearing deeper into the medical campus. Reese stuck with the redhead. She was long-legged, midway between his and Finch's heights, and she set a good pace. Just short of the subway she took a right turn instead, into a narrower street full of tiny mom-and-pop shops. The most conspicuous was a florist's halfway down the block, Reese bet she was headed there. As he paused at the corner, a dirty white laundry van made the turn from the main street, pacing her.

A cold twinge in the back of Reese's mind. The same van he'd seen this morning, near the entrance to her office. He didn't believe coincidence for an instant. The van passed her, slowed. Pulled into a curb spot – rush hour was passing this side street by – just before the florist. The van's side door slid open. Reese broke into a run. One man slid out – Reese's height, brown hair, brown eyes, 180, Caucasian, t-shirt and jeans. His timing was good. He grabbed Deborah as smoothly as a hunting leopard. One hand grabbing her by the hair, the other hand clamping over her mouth against the inevitable scream.

She didn't scream. She clutched her purse. The gun went off. The man rocked back. She apparently liked the effect, because she did it again. The purse was shredded, and it didn't cut the gunshot noise – Reese had been right, revolver – worth a damn.

Reese ran toward them, but his style was cramped by the very real risk of getting shot as the attacker's partner. He stopped several feet short and held out empty hands. "Friend!" He had Stills' badge with him, but his instincts were against offering it. "I'm John. I help people. Nice shooting." A glance told him the attacker was down hard. Two holes in his torso spreading red; Reese doubted even EMT's could do much. He saw Deborah was bleeding from the forehead, too; a lock of her hair had been pulled out whole. "Five seconds to decide if you want to explain things to the cops." Eyewitnesses were pouring out of all the little shops.

Deborah still had her illegal gun in hand. Blood in her eyes only made her blink. "What's my alternative?" A little Australia came through in her voice, now.

The van, engine chugging, still stood at arm's length. "After you," Reese said. She moved decisively as a soldier. Reese barely got inside the vehicle before she peeled away. He closed the van door at speed.

"Deb Robinson," she said, hanging a hard left.

"I know." Reese touched his ear. "We're good, Finch. On the move." Not the library. "We need a safe house and a few bandages. She's hurt, not seriously."

"What do you mean, I know?" Deborah inquired.

"We had a warning from a reliable source that you were in danger," Reese said. "Who was that guy?"

She didn't blink. "A very nasty mugger, I guess. Thank God I was carrying."

_You're a good liar,_ Reese thought, as Finch said in his ear, "The Machine couldn't warn us about a random street crime. She's lying."

"Yeah," Reese said. "How about that safe house?"

"I," Deborah gritted, "am going home. Terry will be worried."

"She left a dead or dying body behind," Harold said in Reese's ear. "Dozens of eyewitnesses. The police will identify her in no time."

Reese thought about it. Took his phone out of his pocket, switched it to speaker. "This is Harold," he said. "Finch, how many cameras on that block?"

They heard keystrokes through the phone. "Only one, at the far end. No clear facial images on Miss Robinson. But the witnesses, Reese."

"Didn't get there until the shooting was over. Maybe a five-second window. Unless someone actually knows her, odds are good." Reese considered. He looked at the dashboard. "This van's hot-wired. Our 'mugger' stole it before we stole it from him. Dump it, wipe the wheel, she might get away with it. Seventy-thirty odds, maybe." He looked at the woman. "Your call."

A twisted grin. "Damn right it's my call. Why are you even _here_?"

"Because we help people," Harold said. "Because you need all the help you can get. And because I've read your files, Miss Robinson. Very interesting. Not my field, but I flatter myself I take a broad view of what's possible."

"Doctor. And my hobbies are Photoshop and writing fantasy novels," Deborah said quickly. "You can't prove a thing." She pulled over in front of a fire hydrant. "It's been nice knowing you, bye then."

"Suspicion would be just as damning as proof, don't you agree?" Harold asked. "And proof is attainable. How badly is she hurt, Mr. Reese?"

Reese poised ready to demand explanations, _now_, but decided to play it straight. "Scalp contusion. Not a big one; bleeding's stopped."

"Check the injury," Finch directed.

John Reese hesitated. It meant laying hands on a woman who one, clearly didn't want him to and two, still had a gun around somewhere. "I don't owe you two anything," Deborah said harshly, "and I've got the feeling you don't want police attention either. This is where you get out."

"Truganini," Harold said distinctly.

The redheaded woman's shoulder's sagged. "Well. Fuck." Her Australian accent had grown heavier than ever. She held the loose hair back over her injury. "I guess that's it."

Reese took the gesture as implicit permission and leaned close to the wound. The … he touched her with a fingertip. "It's a scar. Pink, healthy tissue, maybe a week old." Reese sniffed his fingers. "Real blood. Finch, I _saw_ her get hurt. She has not been _out of my sight,_ and the wound's healed closed before the blood dried." Reese tried to work up a theory with a faked or older injury, couldn't convince himself.

He stared at Deborah. She shrugged. "I heal fast."

"Fast enough to stay ahead of the aging process, I venture to guess," Finch said through the phone. "Which would account for your youth and good health at the age of … is it nearly two hundred years now? Take very good care of Dr. Robinson, Mr. Reese," Finch said. "I'm no biologist, but technically speaking, I think she's not exactly a human being."

[*]

They dumped the van in an industrial district. They took the subway back to Robinson's apartment. She still had the gun in her ruined purse. On the walk from the subway stop to her building, Reese noticed her sweating through the heavy cosmetics. "That's why," he said. "That much makeup looks like an older woman trying to look young, and failing."

A one-sided, wry smile. "I don't know why that's reassuring. Maybe because it would be worse to be at the mercy of stupid people." She took off her glasses and rubbed her sleeve over her forehead. The exposed skin – leaving aside the newly healed part – had the dewy quality of a teenager in full bloom. "Medicine is a tough field for me. Most people are on the high side of thirty before they have their basic qualifications. It makes me stand out."

"You could do something else for a living," Reese said mildly.

"I'm not in this for money." She stared straight ahead.

"What was that magic word all about?" he asked.

"Truganini." She pronounced it differently. "A childhood friend. If your partner knows that, he does know everything."

"Harold usually does," Reese said. "We really are on your side, you know."

She didn't look at him. "We'll see."

Upstairs, Terry Forrest and Harold Finch were standing together just outside the apartment. "Deb!" The young man rushed to her, held her tight. "This guy said you were mugged, hurt."

"Not bad." She leaned into him. Whatever might be false or strange about this woman, Reese thought, their relationship was real. "Not bad, and you should see the other guy. Call me Annie Oakley. Mr. … John helped me get out of there."

"I suggest we all go inside," Harold said. "We have things to discuss."

[*]

Harold had a laptop with him. A good-sized television hung on the living room wall opposite all the books; Finch linked the one to the other with a black cable. "I want to go over the background data for my assertion, for Mr. Reese's benefit," Harold said. "But perhaps it would be easier if you started, Miss – Doctor Robinson."

She was sitting on one side of a squashy loveseat now, Terry beside her, their hands linked. "I haven't told you much about my past," she said to her fiance. "I've actually left out much more than you realized. I … I said I'd probably never be able to have children for you. Immune hypertrophy."

"Her immune system works too well," Terry said to them. "It's good in some ways – Deb is never ever sick – but it also means any fertilized egg is rejected as alien tissue. And I don't care." He looked back at her, eyes shining. "It's why she went into medicine, to study her own syndrome."

"If you want something done right." John nodded.

"I didn't tell you … Terr, I'm sorry. There was never a right time. I didn't tell you how long I'd been studying my problem," Deborah said. "Well over a hundred fifty years. I was born in 1819, the same year as Queen Victoria."

Terry Forrest stared at her. He attempted a smile – the words 'you're joking,' were almost visible on his lips – but it faded as she kept returning his gaze. No, she wasn't. "Um," he said. And, "Wait. You've had a hell of a day, you could have been killed ..."

"Let me show you some pictures." Harold's fingers danced on his laptop. "I found these behind password protection on Deborah's computer – it would be idle to apologize for the violation of privacy at this point. Just look."

A pen-and-ink portrait of three girls in long dresses. The youngest, perhaps fourteen, was clearly Deborah. A stiff sepia-toned wedding photograph, Deborah with a man in a bowler hat and mustache. Deborah as a flapper, her bobbed hair shiny even in the ghostly black and white. Deborah in much-faded color, her hair in a classic 1940's roll, posing with wrenches and a jumpsuit in front of a half-completed World War II bomber. And a much more colorful Deborah in tie-dye and a long skirt, barefoot, her flower-laden hair curling nearly to her waist.

The living woman, here and now, gestured at that last picture. "The Summer of Love. That was a good time," she said wistfully.

"There's also a diary," Harold said. "Scans of paper pages, mostly. I gather you had to abandon a great deal of baggage at some point, Doctor. It's quite extensive."

_My hobbies are Photoshop and writing fantasy novels_, she'd said. The best cover for a collection of information that didn't – exactly – prove anything but suggested everything. "I'm surprised you could believe it, even with all this," Reese told Harold.

"We've seen a thing or two." Such as a sentient computer that could play watchdog for the entire world, yes.

"Deb." Terry squeezed both her hands. "Why?"

She looked down. "I have _how_, I have no _why_. It's like he, Harold, said. I heal. I don't get sick. I don't age. I didn't heal this fast," one hand flew to the fresh scar on her scalp, "from the beginning. It's gotten faster over the years. As to why I lied … I want to live a normal life, Terry. Normal as I can, not a guinea pig in a government lab somewhere. I want to live it with you, that part was never a lie. I'd love to have children with you – that's the main reason I've kept researching my genes – but I don't know how. I never have."

"That's one of the reasons I say she's a new species," Harold remarked. "Not inter-fertile with humans. _Homo sapiens_, I should say. What do you think of _Homo longevity_ for a name?"

Terry turned and gave Finch a dirty look; even Reese thought the remark uncalled for. But Deborah Robinson nodded. "Funny you should say that," she went on. "Species implies more than one individual. I lied about it being a random mugging."

Reese didn't need to look over at Harold. "Yeah."

"When I saw that man face to face, I recognized him. And he recognized me. He was with the Germans in Paris, during the war of 1870."

Reese couldn't place that one, but apparently Finch could; he nodded. "That would be a give-away after all this time, yes. You're sure?"

"Sure as he was." Deborah's hands clenched on Terry's. "He came after me on purpose. He recognized me."

"He was following you before," Reese said. "I didn't get a chance to say, Harold – that van was outside their office this morning. No telling how long he'd been after you. Must have caught a glimpse somewhere and made you."

"Are you sure he was working alone?" Harold asked.

"Who else could one of us trust?" Deborah said. This struck her as undiplomatic; she frowned and added "for the purposes of stealing a fertile mate, that is."

"I hope you can trust us," Reese said gravely. He glanced at Harold for permission, added "We came here to help. You helped yourself. But we have contacts with the police department. We can probably keep them off your back – if you need it. Anyone could see it was a righteous shoot."

"Certainly," Finch agreed. "Anything we can do at all."

Terry nodded as if it were a formality. Deborah said, "There is one thing. It sounds barbaric – but I need his genes. If I can sequence his DNA and compare it to mine, that's the best chance I'll ever have for determining exactly what makes me different. I'd spend years on research otherwise, if I could get results at all. Anything will do. Tissue. A blood sample, even a cheek swab."

Reese blinked. It sounded like a high-tech trophy, like taking a scalp. But they had offered. He glanced at Finch. "I suppose so," the engineer said. "We've asked our sources for pretty strange favors in the past. We'll contact you."

The pause grew, and grew uncomfortable. There was going to be a very tense conversation starting the second Finch and Reese left. But Terry didn't let go of Deborah's hands. "Thank you," he said awkwardly. "We're glad you were there."

"That is the weirdest thing." Reese's voice trailed off as they rode downstairs in the apartment building elevator. "If you hadn't vouched for her being … well. Anyway. Funny those two meeting – again – like that. What are the odds?"

"In New York City?" Finch said mildly. Which was a point.

"The way you kept calling her another species. I just hope she – and any kids she has – feels friendly toward us short-lived types," Reese said. "Imagine what they could do with that kind of edge."

"In the long run, maybe," Harold said. "Not in our lifetimes."

_Sooner or later, both of us will probably wind up dead._ "Never mind, then," Reese said easily.

"Speaking of." Harold was a little pink, and a lot nervous. "John."

A name he never used unless one of them was in danger of death. "Yes?" John said.

"I'd like, if it's convenient for you, this seems like a good time to invite you to my home."

"You have a home?" John blurted. Then, "That is, I wasn't sure. A random selection of safe houses or a different hotel suite every night seemed about right. I know you don't live at the library. There's no shower."

The humor seemed to relax Harold. "I have a home. I'd be honored if you'd join me there for dinner. And, tactically, at some point you may need to know where I live."

Reese thought. The offer meant as much and as little as he wanted to make it mean. Harold had been clear that the initiative was his in any change to their relationship. "Then I guess I should," he said. "Especially since Bear has known about the place for a year already."

"We'll pick him up on the way," Harold said.

[*]


	4. Chapter 4

Harold parked at a rental garage and led Reese another block and a half through an old neighborhood of restored brownstones. It was positively middle class by Manhattan standards. Most of the buildings had been broken into three or more apartments, but a few houses were whole. Harold stopped on the stoop of one of them and punched in an unlock code. "We may not see Miss Barnesdale. But if we do, be low key. She startles easily." Finch let Bear's leash slip as soon as the door closed. He wagged happily over to a dog bed in the corner of the hall.

"No wonder you keep this place secret," Reese said dryly. "Probably someone who wasn't even a millionaire could afford it."

"Money is a tool, not a goal," Harold said. "Besides, I never know when you might need ten million for a mission." He opened a door. "Front room." The space held one chair, a small table, and several thousand neatly shelved books. "The main collection is next door in the office."

Reese nodded. "_That_ is exactly how I pictured your house."

A thin woman, probably sixty-five, appeared at the far end of the hall. "Mr. Wren. I didn't expect you for dinner."

"We'll order something in. Miss Barnesdale, this is my friend John."

She looked doubtfully at Harold, then took Reese's hand in a fragile, cold one. "Pleased to meet you. If you'll excuse me." She passed them and went in the door Finch had identified as the larger library.

"Technically, Miss Barnesdale is my landlady," Harold said. "The house is in her name. She grew up here. Unfortunately over time she's become severely agoraphobic. She hasn't gone past the back courtyard in over ten years. Leaving here would destroy her. I don't always live here. But my tenancy, real or nominal, lets her maintain her home with some money left over for her first love."

"Is he buried in the basement?" Reese asked.

"Her first love is the history of the American Civil War," Finch said patiently. "She's a recognized expert. Written several books - and yet she's never been near a battlefield. Remarkable woman. And as a bonus, legally there's no connection to trace between any of my identities and this address."

"Finch," Reese said, "before I met you, I thought my CIA handlers were paranoid. Are you ever going to tell me why?"

"Upstairs," Harold said instead of answering. "Miss Barnesdale has the third floor and a greenhouse on the roof. I find the second floor is more than enough for my needs."

There was a tiny elevator farther back in the hall, on the side opposite the library doors. Harold took it. Reese took the stairs, and used a few spare seconds to open the first door on the right before the elevator arrived. It was a fairly large bedroom with (pro) its own bath and (con) nothing in it but a plain double bed. "You do live below your means," Reese remarked as Harold came up beside him.

"Sorry about that. This furniture is temporary. I thought I'd ask for a second opinion before getting something more substantial." Harold limped to the closet. Four - no, five - men's suits hung neatly covered by plastic.

Finch waited for Reese to figure it out. He stood until his friend had assessed the suits by eye and realized exactly how much too long they were for Harold. "Me?" Reese said, surprised.

"Any number of scenarios might leave us both needing a place to regroup," Harold said. "I'm sorry if I assumed too much."

Reese shrugged. "Speaking as the man who bugged your glasses, I'm not sure we need to worry about polite boundaries at this point."

Harold breathed. "Then let me show you my room. It's the only place here I spend any real time."

Harold's room, across the hall, was twice the size of Reese's. Two bedrooms had been thrown into one with a wide archway as a dividing line. Bookshelves floor to ceiling on two walls deadened any echoes that the heavy Persian carpet might let through. The near end of the room was a living area, with a leather couch facing a coffee table. A single wing chair next to a really good reading light was obviously Finch's favorite spot. In the middle, opposite the heavily curtained windows, a computer workstation incongruously perched on an antique oak desk. Two laptops flanked a desktop computer with three monitors. At the far end of the room, beyond the arch, was a massive four-poster bed with canopy. "Comfy," Reese said. The bed matched - almost - the antique dresser and chest of drawers that stood on either side of it. But it looked newer, somehow. Finch might not have demands, or even expectations. But he damned well had hopes.

Gently, "what do you want, Harold?"

Finch took the time to choose his words carefully. "Yesterday. When I told you, when you forgave me about the laptop. I want that moment. I don't need sex from you, John. I've done without that more often than I care to add up. But I _need_ that moment, that trust." He took a breath for courage. "I don't ever want to do without it again."

"I can't promise," Reese said just as seriously. Harold's fingers dug into the arms of the wing chair. He willed his face to stay still. And none of that fooled Reese for an instant. The agent's big hand rested over Harold's. "Not because I'd stop trusting you," he amended. "We're a long way past that. Because at some point I'll _be_ stopped. You're the one who told me we'd both wind up dead."

"Not all the implications were clear to me at the time," Finch murmured. "We could stop, I suppose. Before one of us gets stopped." But he knew better. Neither of them, for his own reasons, could endure letting a number go by unaided. Not even one, not even for survival. Reese knew the same certainty was there to be seen in his own eyes.

"A beach in Bali, with umbrellas and great big fruit drinks," John said mockingly.

"I sunburn."

"You would." Reese looked down at their hands, still joined. "So, partners first. For the numbers. But you'd like it if sex could go on in there too."

"Such a feeble word, _like_," Harold protested mildly.

That raised a pirate grin. "Mr. Finch, would you go on a date with me?"

"Mr. Reese, I thought I was."

"In that case, you owe me that meal."

Harold went to the desktop computer, typed in several sentences. "I have macros for several restaurants in the area."

He made to return to the wing chair. Reese shook his head and patted the next cushion on the leather couch. "Here."

Harold sat. Primly, was the only word Reese could come up with. Next to Reese but in his own spot on the couch, not touching. Nerves. Reese breathed, to control his own first. "It's all right." He laid his arm along the back of the couch, let Harold decide when to relax back into it.

In a while, Harold did. The heavier fabric of his coat, where John's hand rested on his opposite shoulder, was familiar in general but strange in this context, so unlike a woman's clothes. John stroked Harold's face with the fingertips of his other hand. Soft skin, softer lips, the unfamiliar scrape of barely-visible beard stubble.

"You, sir, are doing this wrong," Harold said without one note of complaint. "Not if you're going to be a straight man dabbling in 'bi-curiosity.'" He made a face, relaxed again as John's index finger traced the lines beside his mouth.

"How's that?" John whispered.

"In a word, foreplay. You're treating me like a human being instead of test equipment," Harold said softly. "Grab and go, that's the rule. No eye contact, nothing face to face. Especially, no kissing. Somebody might think you had emotions about ..."

_Grab, yes._ John buried his fingers in Harold's wiry hair, pulled his head forward. After the first instant of shock, Harold was quite a kisser. Patient, thorough, generous. As time passed, the initiative moved from Reese to Finch without anyone planning it. Finch's long fingers slid into John's hair in turn. _I've got to stop using gel._ It didn't seem to worry Finch.

Bear saved them from terminally shocking Miss Barnesdale. The dog darted in the second the door opened, and bounced joyfully in between his two owners. Miss Barnesdale, handicapped by a small cart in front of her, was slower off the mark. The cart contained takeout boxes, china plates and silverware, a bottle of wine and two glasses. "Your dinner arrived, Mr. Wren," she said. "I thought the Shiraz would be appropriate."

"Thank you," Harold said gravely. John muttered a command in Dutch. Bear obediently lay down, ears straight up, and waited for spills or treats.

"Have a good night, Mr. Wren," Miss Barnesdale said. And - Reese was nearly sure - winked.

The meal was a welcome distraction. They had trust. They had confidence in each other. What they'd never had was small talk. Both men were one-track minds, deeply involved in their own fields of expertise and little else. All they had for common ground was their common experience with the numbers. For a while they reminisced about cases, the tiny details that had meant life or (rarely) death.

The conversation died at about the same time the food ran out. Harold set down his wineglass. "John." His voice had the note of patient stubbornness that had caused so much trouble in the past. "I'd like you to stay here tonight. On any basis you like. But I don't want to send you home and worry about your nightmares."

"They don't happen all the time," Reese evaded.

Harold didn't let up. "How often, then?"

Reese could quantify that. Two or three nights in five. "They're not always that bad." He tried a smile. Harold's expression didn't change.

"What I saw when I stayed at your loft seemed bad enough. This morning sounded worse."

Reese considered. The guest room next door, even with Bear present, would be no better than the loft. Somehow the thought of Finch awake, alone in the big bed, listening for screams through the wall was the worst part of that idea. He glanced through the arch at Harold's bed. "There is plenty of room."

Finch smiled shyly and ventured another kiss. Reese moved in to meet it. Touching him was different, but in a good way; Harold was in a class by himself. Natural to hold Finch, since he was bigger. Natural to let his muscles relax until Harold was lying on top of him on the couch. Warmth was growing in his belly that had nothing to do with the satisfying meal. The embrace felt good. Ever since he'd fully committed to this job, Reese had worried for his fragile partner whenever Finch was out of his sight on a case. Here and now he could let that go, concentrate fully on his senses. They were rubbing hard against each other through too many layers of clothes. Harold's glasses had wound up on the floor by the couch. His exposed pale eyes were shining and vulnerable. Reese stroked his face, wondered how someone so caring had spent so much time alone. Were people really that stupid?

Harold untangled from his arms and sat up on the couch, breathing hard. "I think ... my tailor would never forgive me." He fumbled at his own vest and tie.

Reese shed his suit coat, laid it semi-folded across Harold's reading chair. No tie to worry about. In Reese's opinion, a tie was a handle for an opponent to choke you with. Shoes, dress pants, shirt until he stood in a thin undershirt and briefs. Harold by contrast seemed to prefer boxers. Silk, by the look of them, with a small dignified pattern. He would. Shame about the drape of the fabric being distorted right now.

Finch followed his eye line. "But I am very sincere," he said.

"I can tell." Reese captured both his hands and took him to the bed.

The kissing was all right, the stroking, the embraces. The springy mattress and the thick soft linens held them like another pair of arms. But. The first time Harold's deft hands drifted below his waist, Reese felt ice flow through his veins. The back of a hand tracing his length through the briefs and he could smell campfire smoke. Body odors, the makeshift latrine outside the stone hut. Laughing...

His hands closed on Harold's wrists, harder than he meant. It took everything Reese had not to use combat force. The reflex-wired moves would be so easy. Harold submitted to the hold, stopped at once. The agent was moving back, to the very edge of the bed. "John?" Harold's voice wavered.

He breathed. Made himself go on breathing. "I am not as all right as I thought I was." Reese barely recognized his own voice. "As I wanted to be. It's not you, Harold. Not one bit is you."

The grief and love and pity in Harold's face was terrible. John wanted to force himself forward anyway, but he could never fool the man. "Not you," John repeated.

Harold swung his feet off the side of the bed, turned his back. Reese saw his bare scars for the first time, at the top and bottom of his spine. The livid marks of burns and shrapnel, the neat white lines of surgical repair inside the larger scars. All encompassed in the pale, pudgy body of a not especially fit man over fifty. Ordinary and irreplaceable. Reese wanted to trace every mark, make it all better. Harold wiped his eyes. "I didn't mean to."

"I know that." He could move now. Reese laid hands on Harold's shoulders. "It's just a wound. They happen." Harold made a painful sound. "Lie back down. I can hold you, and you can hold me. It's a lot better than being alone."

They found a position by wordless compromise. Harold on his back with his knees raised under the covers while Reese curled on his side with an arm around Finch's shoulders. Harold couldn't turn his head, but his eyes fixed on as much of Reese as he could. Harold's more fragile body relaxed, but only partly. "I'm chagrined to admit this," Harold said in his lecturing tone, "but my responses, that is..."

"You're still hot and bothered as hell," Reese said softly. He could even smile, when Harold started turning pink again. "No offense taken. You're a guy."

Harold started to sit up. "I'll be back."

The idea of his friend in a hurried, shamed masturbation session in the bathroom was suddenly intolerable. "No, Harold." John brushed his lips across the side of the other man's face. "Here. Show me."

Harold's eyelids dipped. "You're so beautiful," he murmured. "I'm not much of anything."

This time John brushed their lips together. "You're you. Show me."

It did take courage, John could see that, for a painfully shy man with little physical confidence. But Harold always had courage. He showed himself, touched himself while John's arms stayed around him. His excitement grew when John moved from general moral support to outright staring; Harold was discovering that he liked being seen. Admired. When John's free hand traced the line of a hipbone, a thigh, he turned charmingly red. His hands became a blur. He made small, beautiful gasps as the moment loomed ahead of them. Then John's fingertips brushed like a feather against his scrotum. He yelped out loud and yielded, his voice dropping into a moan. John held him through it all.

When Harold was quiet, John kissed him on the lips more thoroughly. He got enthusiastic cooperation. _I don't like sleeping alone,_ he thought, and, _why should I?_

"Towels are on your side of the bed," Harold mumbled, almost asleep.

Reese thought about pinching him back awake; that was no way to treat a guest. But he fumbled for the drawer. Laid a towel on Harold's bare stomach. A bubble of perfect happiness had grown behind his breastbone. It felt like half a bottle of champagne. No, better. Joy, that was it.

Harold offered him the towel, too. John didn't need it. He gathered the smaller man into a spoon position and draped the covers over both of them. Neither stayed awake long enough to turn out the lights.


	5. Chapter 5

John Reese came awake to the sound of a cell phone alarm at seven a.m., knowing exactly which bed he was in and with who. Every detail felt good. Harold wasn't in his arms any more but sitting up from the same alarm. He blinked blindly and slowly felt over the top of the bedside table. "Glasses," Harold mumbled.

"The floor by the couch." It was simplest for Reese to get them himself. "Sorry. I ruined your bedtime routine." He held them up.

"Any time." Glasses on, Harold looked more like himself. Even stark naked. He started to draw the sheet chastely to his waist, made a wry face at the silliness of the gesture. "Good morning, John. You're looking well."

Reese had retained his underwear in the course of the evening. He felt an urge to strip down too, and claim it was manners. "Thanks. Same goes." Words weren't easy for him, never had been. He'd lost Jessica for lack of words. Reese was tired of losing. He went to the bed and rested one hand on Harold's cheek.

"I have a question, Mr. Reese." Harold couldn't turn his head. But he guided the hand around to the front and placed a small kiss on the palm. His eyes sparkled. "Do you want first turn in the shower?"

Reese found himself smiling. Something else he'd have to get used to, apparently. "You go. I should catch Fusco early about the DNA sample."

"Very well." Harold got up and walked naked to the bathroom with complete composure. Reese found himself watching. The new experiences just kept coming, yes.

Something simple. He picked up his phone. "Fusco. I have a question about a body that hit the ground near 57th Street yesterday evening."

"God dammit," Fusco growled. "I thought some of those wit descriptions sounded familiar. But I told myself, no. The _one_ thing I can count on with Merry Sunshine is, he doesn't waste police time. So now you're into freaking performance art?"

"What happened to the body?" Reese said.

"The 'body,' as you already know, sat up and walked away before the EMTs even got there," Fusco said. "Damn near gave the little old lady from the flower shop a heart attack. You tell your new girlfriend, whoever she is, we've got you both and your buddy the play-dead comedian on six or eight solid charges. Including littering my city with a goddamn lake of fake blood."

Reese wondered if he was going crazy. "You're sure it was fake?"

"Yeah, we got right on that typing and cross-matching," Fusco snarled. "We hosed down the street. You expected what, applause?"

Reese sat down slowly. "Sorry to bother you." He hung up. "Harold!" But no, something else came first. He thumbed another contact on the phone.

Deborah sounded sleepy but cheerful. "Yeah?"

"This is Reese." He couldn't remember if he'd used that name with her. "John. Where are you? Are you safe? Is Forrest with you?"

"Home, yes, and yes." She sounded positively perky. "You know it's Saturday, right?"

Finch came out of the bathroom wiping traces of shaving cream off his face. "Mr. Reese?"

"The guy you shot is alive," Reese said flatly. "Stood up and walked away a few minutes later. He must have healed like you do, maybe faster."

Harold was standing beside him now. Reese put the phone on speaker in time to hear Deborah curse. He couldn't place the language.

"You said you help people," she went on. "You know what? You can _have_ this guy. I'm leaving town." Muffled speech on her end of the phone. "Terr wants me to meet his sister's family, I hear Ohio is lovely, we're good as gone."

"I commend your caution," Harold said. "Let me arrange plane tickets. Don't leave the apartment for any reason until we get there. Mr. Reese and I will escort you to the airport."

[*]

They took the time to drop Bear at the library; the first flight Harold could get was a few hours later anyway. No one was waiting outside Deborah and Terry's apartment building. Upstairs, Terry let them inside. "Hello. I suppose we need to thank you, for the extra help with the plane tickets." He didn't sound at all sure. Reese and Finch were too closely associated with the sudden destruction of his quiet life to be his favorite people right now.

Deborah had her handgun out on the coffee table, cleaning it. One last swipe with an oily rag and she locked it in the metal box with her tools and ammunition. "Shame I can't take that with me."

"You shouldn't need it in Ohio," Reese said.

Harold handed the couple their ticket printouts. "Round trip, with an open return date," he said. "We should talk about that. Our resources are considerable, Miss... Dr. Robinson. But we have no name on your assailant, no picture, no leads of any kind. We can electronically surveil your home and office, in case he comes looking for you again. But if he has the intelligence to lie low a while, as it appears he does ... I'm not sure when it will be safe for you two to come home again. If."

"We talked about that last night." Terry took Deborah's hand. "Deb told me ... well, she has some money. Over a hundred years of investments. The foundation that funded her research - it's basically _her_, through a shell company."

"Imagine something like that," Reese said. Harold ignored him.

"So we can, she can do research anywhere," Terry went on. "And I've finished my residency. I can go into practice if I want. We may not even try to come back here. I'd like to spend a good long time with my sister, think about it. She and her kids are all the family I have left."

"Your late grandmother's murder was in the files we researched about you both," Harold said. "My condolences."

"She raised me and Celeste after our mother took off. She was wonderful," Terry said. "I keep hoping one day they'll catch him."

Time was getting short. They had bags; Reese helped carry them. Again, no one was waiting or watching outside the apartment building. No car followed their taxi to JFK. At the airport, no one watched them stop outside the terminal and offload bags. Deborah solemnly kissed Reese, then Harold, on the cheek. "Thank you for your help." Terry Forrest shook hands. Then they were gone.

Harold gave the taxi driver an address close to the library. "Perhaps we'll have a little free time after this," he mused. "Let's take Bear and go to your loft."

"There's that strict no-pet policy," Reese said. "I'm surprised we got away with it when you were sick." A couple of months earlier, when a flu-stricken Harold along with Bear spent a few days at the loft.

Harold smiled faintly. "Er, strictly speaking, we didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"Get away with it. The building super saw me walking Bear while you were asleep. He simply would not listen to reason. In the end I had to take fairly serious steps."

Reese had a bad feeling about this. "Steps?"

"Your new landlord is much more understanding, I assure you."

"You bought the building."

"Indirectly, yes. I couldn't let anything happen to Bear."

It wasn't, from a certain point of view, any stranger than giving Reese the apartment for his birthday in the first place. But one point didn't track. "If you did this eight weeks ago, why didn't you tell me?"

Harold was suddenly fascinated by the view out of the window. Reese waited him out. "Because I like having Bear live with me," Finch said quietly. "He is very good company. I didn't realize until you acquired him, but he fills a certain void. I'd be very lonely without him."

John Reese let his arm slide around Harold. "That was the past."

Harold smiled cautiously. He leaned in as much as he could. "I didn't want to assume anything."

Reese felt shy of kissing him with a cab driver in the front seat. But he didn't let go. "I..." Words again. _God, I'm sorry I couldn't do much, sorry I hurt you. I want this to go on but I don't know how. We're both broken, if the world wasn't fucked up you'd be with Grace and I'd be with Jess but I do, I love you too..._ "You can."

Harold was a genius. Maybe even genius enough to read minds. He reached up and wrapped John's arm more firmly around his shoulders. "Then that's settled."

[*]


	6. Chapter 6

On the flight to Cleveland, Deborah Robinson put a hand on Terry's shoulder and spoke quietly under the engine noise. "There's one more thing I should tell you. Should have told you before we got engaged. I didn't want to go into it in front of strangers. We didn't meet by chance. I came to New York, to this research institute instead of any other, just to meet you."

"Why was that?" he asked flatly. The last few days had been hard on him.

"You participated in a study in med school."

"Several. I needed the money."

"The one I'm thinking of used blood samples to test the genetic variants making up the immune system," Deborah said. "Thousands of subjects were checked for a few dozen specific markers. A tiny subset of those had their entire genetic code sequenced. You were the clear winner. I chose those markers, Terr. They represent my best guesses at what makes me different. Or some of what does. On a genetic level, you're more like me than anyone I've ever met."

"Except _him_," Terry said bleakly. She could only nod. But his scientific mind kept working away at the problem. "Wait. Are you trying to say that _I_ am not going to age?"

"That hope is why I sought you out," Deborah said frankly. "I think now I was wrong. You're about to turn thirty-one, and you look it. More likely, you'll age slower than normal; the kind of man who lifts weights and runs senior marathons at eighty and ninety. The part you need to know is, because of those genes there's a small chance you could father a child with me after all."

"You're talking about a child like you," Terry said slowly.

"No child who wasn't could survive me _in utero_," Deborah answered. "You know my immune system."

"You've got money. We could use a surrogate mother."

"If the child was my ... species, then _she_ might not survive," Deborah said. "My mother died having me. A lot of women did back then, of course ... but I've seen the doctor's notes. Translate 1800's medical terms into the present and it sounds like a massive autoimmune collapse. Blood crosses the placenta both ways during birth, no way to stop it. I'm not going to risk anyone's life on that chance."

Terry stared out the window. "We must be like ghosts to you," he said bitterly. "Here today, gone tomorrow, barely even real."

She was staring straight ahead, too. "It would be easier," she admitted. "For a while, when I first knew, I tried to live that way. And I was little more than a ghost myself. People matter, Terry. In all the universe the only _meaning_, the only good and evil, is contained in people. I have to let myself care, even when it hurts. Or else I'm as dead as anyone else would be at my age."

"That was before," he persisted. "When there wasn't anybody else like you. You thought. _He_ doesn't seem too worried about human beings."

"And that's what makes him a monster," Deborah said. "His choices, not his genes. Plenty of monsters just like him who are fully human. I'd rather do without long-lived company forever than have anything to do with him."

Terry smiled helplessly. "I do believe that," he said. "I've got to."

A long silence. "You don't have to do anything," Deborah said slowly. "I can come see your sister with you. Or we can part ways in Ohio. It's your decision - always was. All I can say in my defense ... I didn't have to live with you, Terry. I could have set up another research study, said I was taking sperm samples - you know you would have done it. Or stuck with the blood sample I have. We'll have human cloning down in ten years, maybe less. I had a plan in place very much like that. But I met you, got to know you, and it changed all my plans. I said I'd marry you because I wanted to, Terry. I still do, long time or short time. All you have to decide is how you feel."

[*]

Even Harold Finch couldn't spend every moment listening to a Number's cell phone. But his computers could, and the program he favored had speech recognition almost as capable as the Machine itself. Harold listened to the recording less than two hours later, John Reese standing behind his computer table. "They have a hard road ahead," Harold said. "Incompatible life spans. They may not make it."

_It's just a wound. They happen._ "Maybe they will," Reese said slowly. "Maybe having problems isn't, isn't as important as how you choose to handle them."

Harold reached back, captured Reese's hand. He held it against his cheek. They stood that way a long time.

A harsh, mechanical jingle broke the silence. The old-fashioned pay phone Harold had reconnected in the lobby of the empty library. It was literally the case that no human being, besides Finch and Reese, knew that phone number was operable. "I'll get it," Reese said, and hurried.

[*]

Harold looked at the Dewey Decimal numbers on the spines of the three books again, just to be sure. "That's strange," he said. "It's a valid number, but it belonged to a Thomas David McNeil. MIA, presumed killed, at the Battle of the Bulge."

"Presumed," Reese said.

"That was 1945. Even if he survived, he'd be ... oh, shoot." Harold typed quickly on the computer. "He's got descendants, he was married with three kids. The youngest ... Mr. Reese, our new number was Dr. Terry Forrest's maternal grandfather."

"People like Deborah can't have kids with normal people. I thought," John said.

"Her exact wording was that she can't _bear_ children," Harold said pedantically. "We assumed that would also stop the male of the species from reproducing. Maybe we assumed wrong."

"Even if you're right, they should be safe in Ohio," Reese responded. "Nobody's seen this guy in sixty years."

Harold stared at the computers. "Under that name," he said. "Maybe we should head that direction, just in case."

[*]

Terry wasn't talking much when they reached the airport at Cleveland. But he held Deborah's hand, and that gave her hope. They were laden with suitcases and laptop bags when they reached the curb outside the main terminal. "Do you see her?" Deborah asked.

"I'm not sure what 'Leste is driving these days," Terry said. "Oh. There." The hazard lights on a large, bulky SUV flashed, and it began working its way through traffic toward them.

"Terry, sweetie!" His sister Celeste shared his curly brown hair and brown eyes. But she was considerably shorter, and a little plump - actually three months into a pregnancy, Deborah knew from e-mails. "Can you two manage? I don't dare get out from behind the wheel in a loading zone. Besides." She waved at the back of the vehicle. The SUV had three rows of back seats. The back two were full, at Deborah's first glance, with about ten thousand car seats. A more sober assessment cut that to two and another child, a bigger boy, in an ordinary seatbelt. But the chorus of "Uncle Terry!" seemed to be coming from a much larger crowd.

There was a space behind the last row of seats - armies had staged invasions with vehicles smaller than this SUV - and Terry wrangled all their bags into it. "I'm Celeste, you're Deb. The pictures don't do you justice," Celeste said cheerfully. "Why don't you come up front with me. We've got a bit of a drive ahead."

"Sure, throw me to the wolves," Terry complained. But he strapped in willingly enough next to the bigger boy.

Celeste signaled and merged with traffic. "So nice to finally meet you," she said. "I hear congratulations are in order. I'm glad my silly little brother finally came to his senses."

"I came to something. Maybe it's senses," Terry said. But he softened the remark with a smile. "Good to see you, 'Leste. You're looking well."

"Yes. Well." Celeste's face stiffened. "The truth is, we have some news too. Just the other day. Aidian - the new baby - they wanted to do a more detailed sonogram, because of my age. Then they did amniocentesis. He's not well, Terry. Not ... I guess you'd say, normal. He's going to have Down's Syndrome."

Terry looked stricken. "God, I'm sorry."

"This is a bad time," Deborah said. "If I'd realized..."

Celeste smiled, though it was watery. "No, no. You're family now. Family is what I need." She said doggedly, "It's not always so bad. There's a risk of heart defects, spina bifida, but I've been doing research. There's a foundation that helps parents. They had all these pictures, those children have such precious smiles ... so I decided. We're having the baby. It's my choice, I told Will, and I've chosen."

"I think you're very brave," Deborah said.

'My husband Will was so angry," Celeste went on. "Especially because this is our last baby. He said ..." she glanced at the back seat. "He said some rash things. I'm really glad he had this trip scheduled. Maybe it will give us both time to cool off. He'll said be back tonight."

"What does your husband do?" Deborah said in quest of a more neutral topic.

"Oh, insurance. Most people in his line live in one of the bigger cities," Celeste said. "But he inherited the horse farm from an uncle when he was young. He so loves it out here. I say farm," she went on, "it doesn't make much money, not enough to keep us. And it means he has to travel so often for work. But he loves the horses, and I've come to love it out here too. Such a good place for the children."

Terry was ready for a less stressful subject, too. "This guy next to me is Billy, William Shearer Junior," he said. "He's nine. And let me see if I have this straight. Molly is five, and Kate is three."

"_I'm_ Kate!" a voice soared up from the rear seat.

"Sorry. Kate is five, Molly is three."

Deborah turned and waved at everyone. She smiled. "You have a lovely family," she said.

[*]

Harold Crane, multi-millionaire with numerous unspecified business holdings, owned a small jet as well as the seaplane John had seen a few months before. He went through pre-flight checks while John stowed a bag of guns behind the front seats. "I hope those are unloaded," Harold said. "We've evaded airline regulations, but an accidental discharge at altitude would still be catastrophic."

"It's handled." Reese fastened his seat belt in the copilot's seat. "So if we're right, that's why Deborah found the man of her genetic dreams in New York. This other guy was breeding them. That means ... oh, hell. His sister has been having kids with her own grandfather without knowing it."

"I very much hope that's all it means," Harold said grimly. "Thomas McNeil's daughter never knew her father; he was reported lost in World War II before she was born. She had two children with a man we know nothing about - I can't find a photograph of him anywhere in the Internet, for example - on the far side of the country, never took him home to her relatives. She disappeared when her children were eight and two. And her mother - a woman who could surely identify Thomas McNeil by sight even decades later - was murdered without a known motive a year before Celeste Sterne married William Shearer. Whatever happens, I fear the news we're bringing this family is anything but good."

"Let's concentrate on getting there," Reese said.

[*]

The Ohio countryside was like a different planet than Manhattan. The house was barely visible from the big metal gate that Terry had to open and close for the SUV at the highway. An ornamental metal arch with the word SHEARER and two metal silhouettes of horse skulls. "Biggest property in the county," Celeste told Deborah proudly. Horses grazed in wide fenced fields on either side of the driveway, but the internal farm gates stood open. "Will says the horses should live in something as close to their natural environment as possible; he only saddle-breaks the ones he intends to sell. He can ride anything, of course. Will really does have so many fine qualities."

Deborah glanced back at Terry; _not as a father_ was in both their eyes. "You have a lovely home, Celeste," Deborah said.

A horse blocked the driveway; Celeste let the SUV drift to a stop. "Oh! This is one of Will's particular favorites," she said. The horse was small, almost donkey-sized with a short, stiff mane. "I can never pronounce ... yes. Przewalski's horse," Celeste said proudly. "The only true wild horse breed still alive. It's almost identical to the horses that were first domesticated thousands of years ago. From Mongolia. Will has the only ones in private hands on the North American continent. In the long run I think he'd like to make the entire place a preserve for them, if we can afford it." She tapped lightly on the horn, and the not-quite-horse ambled out of their way.

The house was long and rambling. "Six bedrooms," Celeste told them. "I've put you at the far end, the guest room with its own bathroom. I never know when one of my three is going to get up in the night. Things should be quiet there."

"Thanks," Terry said.

One whole end of the house was open to the rafters, with living areas and a dining area and a wide kitchen flowing into each other. "Cartoons!" demanded the bigger of the two little girls. Kate, Deborah was fairly sure.

"In the play room, honey. Keep the noise down." All three children disappeared.

"I don't know about you two," Celeste said, "But I need coffee."

[*]

They'd found common ground in a discussion of 'chick flick' movies, a little short of dusk, when Celeste raised her head. "That's the garage door. He's earlier than I thought." A door at the back of the kitchen opened. "There you are, darling. You remember Terry, and this is his fiancée Deborah Robinson."

William Shearer walked in and kissed his wife. He was a tall man, nearly six-two, lean but muscular with a faint swagger. Jeans and cowboy boots suited him. Dark hair and dark eyes. The children clustered around him, engulfing him solidly to the waist in hugs. He smiled and looked over at Deborah.

"Oh," she said quietly, "We've met. In New York."


	7. Chapter 7

Reese grabbed the airplane's radio. "Harold, can you get their local police on this? Call 911? Something."

[*]

Terry stared. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that he..."

Shearer moved, fast and decisive, slipping away from his children. A long slashing backhand knocked Terry off his feet. Celeste screamed. He crouched over Terry, came up with a phone. "None of that," he said as Deborah bolted for the kitchen knife block. "There are too many hostages around, don't you think? Be still, and keep your hands where I can see them." He didn't appear to have a gun. He didn't appear to need one. "Your phone. Slide it across the counter." He had a hand on Terry's throat.

"Daddy," Billy said urgently, arms around his little sisters. The look Shearer turned on him made the child shrink back.

"Will," Celeste said desperately, "I don't understand."

Deborah showed her phone, slid it carefully across the granite kitchen cabinet toward Will Shearer. "You don't have to hurt him. Any of them. He's not part of this," she said carefully. "I'll do what you want. Whatever you want."

"Do you know, I nearly left here for good after you shot me in New York?" Shearer said genially. "It was time, really. Celeste and the one in her belly are both useless to me now. Billy won't grow into one of our kind; he's had strep throat half a dozen times since he was a baby. The girls are no good to me for another twenty years." His smile was inhuman. "But then I heard you were coming here, to hide from the big bad monster man."

"How did you find me?" Deborah asked, almost calm. "In New York, I mean."

"Good fortune." Shearer grinned. "I was keeping an eye on," he shook the semiconscious Terry, "this one. Brothers can make problems. Imagine my joy when I found something so much better. How did you find him?" He didn't sound very curious.

"It's this thing I do. Called science."

Celeste was creeping slowly sideways, toward a wall phone. Shearer strode forward and had the largest kitchen knife in his hand. "One sign of police, one sound, and I'll cut that freak out of you first thing," he said with shocking calm.

[*]

Reese's hands fell into his lap, useless. "How soon can we get there?" he asked.

Harold shuddered. "An hour. If I can find a level field to land us right on their property - it may be more of a controlled crash. Not one second sooner." His eyes were anguished. In their ear buds, first Terry's phone and then Deborah's crushed and fell silent.

[*]

Deborah spread her hands, lax, empty. "Whatever you want," she repeated. "Will - or what should I call you? What's your real name?"

"Shearer is quite close, actually," he said cheerfully. "Closer than I've used in several lives. _G__hemmen owis, wlna ne._ A saying I grew up with, "The gods make men sheep, therefore shear them."

"What language is that? Where are you from?" she asked. "I'm curious. You must know I've never met anyone else like you - like us - before."

He rocked back on his heels, though his hand didn't leave Terry's throat. The young man seemed stunned. "Horse tamer," he said. "You would say, proto-Indo-European. I've studied languages, the modern reconstructions are quite close. My tribe was the first to ride horses - and we swept all others before us like dust for a thousand years afterward. Your scientists say, twelve thousand years ago; that seems as good a date as any to me. Older than calendar systems. By the Black Sea, perhaps? I remember salt water, growing up. Older than maps."

"And you were the one who didn't age," Deborah said. "The one who didn't die. Like me. Were there others?"

"Not one," Shearer said with disgust. "Not even my sons. Not even my sons by my daughters." A gasp from Celeste. "I ruled by then, my word was law. But they grew tired of a deathless clan leader. Each generation of strong young men, wanting rule for themselves and finding me still in the way. In the end they massed and drove me out."

"So sad," Deborah said with an edge in her voice.

"You will learn respect, or I will teach you," Shearer said in a low voice. "Yes, it was sad. I had so many plans for the world, with sons to help me. I still do. And with you, at last those plans can bear fruit. Why fight me? You can be queen of the world, for a thousand years. More."

"I set out to find - or make - others like us as a scientist. A geneticist," Deborah said. "Maybe even something that could be shared, an end to sickness and old age for the whole human race. And you set out as a livestock breeder."

"Why not?" Shearer shrugged.

Deborah's lip curled. "You can kill me," she said. "You can't make me join you."

"Can I not?" He turned, and hit Terry. Again. Again.

Celeste was screaming, all the children, Deborah clawing at him. He threw them all aside and kept on hitting. Deborah threw herself down on her knees and screamed loudest of all. "Stop! God, stop. You win, I'll do it. Whatever you want."

He grabbed her by the hair again, drew her close. "Your weakness is no match for my strength," Shearer said. "Ever. Remember that." He let Terry fall to the floor. His eyes moved. "And you, woman. Call for help, tell anyone what happened here, and I will come back." Celeste clutched her children to her.

Shearer stood up. He dragged Deborah with him. "Come along, then."

[*]

"Five hundred feet," Harold Finch said. "We're nearly down to stall speed. That driveway is the best chance we have."

Reese nodded. "Thanks for everything, Harold."

[*]

Nothing was going to move that aircraft again without major repairs; the landing gear was twisted into pretzels. But they were down, and alive, and the front lawn was hardly on fire at all. Reese ran toward the lights of the house, leaving Harold to follow as best he could . He ran with a gun drawn. No silencer this time. No time, and also no need. The front door was locked. He smashed it down with a couple of quick kicks.

Living room, kitchen ... crowd of weeping people. Some of them were tiny children. A woman was bent over Terry Forrest, tears dripping, dabbing at bloody cuts on his face with a wad of paper towels. "No! He said, no police," she said desperately.

"I'm not the police." Reese checked the injuries. It looked like a concussion to him, maybe a broken jaw. "Deborah."

"He went crazy! They were both crazy, they were talking about people living thousands of years..."

"Your husband." Reese said. "Ma'am, I'm afraid your husband is a very bad man. What happened to Deborah?"

"He took her. He said ... none of it made sense. They didn't take a car, I would have heard the engine," Celeste said. "Horses, maybe. Will can ride any horse ever born."

"Where would he go?" Reese was in despair as he asked it. A man like Shearer, who had changed identities dozens of times, would surely have another one ready to go. Reese would. "How long since they left?"

"Maybe thirty minutes," Celeste said.

"Where would they go on horseback?" Reese asked. "Think. No one knows your husband as well as you do."

"There's a place at the far end of the property," Celeste said. "Maybe. It has a sort of tent - he calls it a yurt. He likes wilderness camping sometimes, he won't let us go with him. But there's usually a farm jeep there. It backs up to the national forest, he could leave that way."

"That's it," Reese said. He looked up. Harold limped through the door. "Stay with them," he said. "Send for help. Ma'am, I'm going to need that SUV outside."

"Keys by the back door," she said numbly. "But ... he said he'd come back, if I called the police."

"He's not coming back," Reese said. "Help them, Finch." He grabbed the keys.

[*]

Bruising hands around her waist held Deborah on the galloping horse. A big mustang, not one of the whatsisname's horses. But after the first ten minutes she was holding on, too. Falling from a horse at speed was not the death she wanted. Deborah's goals had narrowed as the sun went down and the countryside got more and more isolated. No help was coming. She'd never escape on foot. She just wanted to live.

Shearer pulled up at a large, round tent with a wooden frame. "Yurt," he said. "My people used a different shaped tent, but it's close. Sometimes I come here to live a while as a man should live." The door was a flap of heavy felt. He pushed her inside.

A round hole in the middle of the ceiling showed darkening sky and the first few stars. A stack of firewood was laid. Shearer lit it with - the detail shocked her, in context - an ordinary cigarette lighter. "Of course, some new ways are convenient," he said.

A dusty Jeep nestled in one section of the yurt; the rest was primitive. Horse skulls hung from the wooden ribs of the tent. Horse hides were piled close to the wall. Dried meat hung in strips from the ceiling, beside leather bottles of some liquid. Long and short knives of a brown metal - bronze? - on a crude wooden table, others that seemed to be stone. Shearer stepped between her and the weapons. "No. Nothing so easy. I won't trust you near anything sharp for a long, long time."

"You've got to sleep sometime," Deborah said. Wishing her voice didn't shake.

He grinned and tossed something from a pocket to the dirt floor. Modern, steel handcuffs. "Are you going to make me use them?" he asked lightly.

Yes and no were equally impossible. She sprang at him, fingers out like claws.

He backhanded her. Not hard, compared to the way he'd attacked Terry, but her head spun and her vision blurred.

Her shirt tore. Another shove and Deborah was falling back onto the pile of hides.

[*]

Light coming through the chinks in the yurt, smoke through a hole in the roof. Reese killed the SUV engine a hundred yards off and sprinted the rest of the way. He looked carefully, gun out, through the loose tent flap. They hadn't gotten away. Shearer was still here, with Deborah. He was raping her.

Reese's gun came up, no aiming needed, and boomed. Part of the back of Shearer's head splattered away. He came up, off his victim, more a spasm than an escape attempt. When his head turned, bringing his face into view, Reese shot that. Two more in the upper torso, three in the lower, keeping a sight picture as the body sagged toward the dirt floor. Another one in the side of the neck. The blood jetted black in the firelight. Any more seemed like overkill. The body hit the ground, and time resumed its normal speed for Reese.

Her eyes were wild, terror and horror but above all rage. One hand went to her ankle, came up with something sharp and gleaming. A kitchen knife. She began to stab the body, humming a frantic little tune all the while.

Reese could relate, but he pulled the woman off Shearer. "It's okay. You're okay." Lies, but the kind you had to say. "Let's get your clothes ... hey!" She twisted loose. "Stop that."

"Twelve thousand years," she said distinctly.

_Is how long it felt like?_ He got that. "You're okay."

Deborah shoved his hands off her. "_He_ is twelve thousand years old," she gritted. "I'm under two hundred, and look how fast _I_ heal."

Behind her, the body sat up. The hideous hole in its face began to shrink.

Reese fired his gun dry in about two seconds. It got ... fraught after that. He pounded on the head with the empty gun. It kept moving. Not like a person, but a horrible blind groping. He may have screamed. Deborah _was_ screaming, and wielding her kitchen knife. He remembered he had a knife too, short but sharp. It took him ages to get the lockback open but then things went better. After a while the body went down again.

Deborah had blood splattered on her face and arms and breasts; she didn't look entirely sane. "Weapons," she hissed, pointing at a crude table. Reese looked. A lot of primitive stuff.

The head was misshapen beyond belief, but the body sat up again.

They got a system going after that. Deborah hacked at the neck, with an obsidian blade from the table, while Reese hit the head with a stone-headed club whenever it started to twitch too much. Blood fountained, more blood than should exist in a body after all that. The tendons between the neck bones took forever.

At last Deborah hauled on the dripping head by the hair. It came away from the neck. She slung it into a corner. Then the body went lax and stayed. Then the blood flowed sluggish and stopped. Reese went across the room and hit the head a couple more times, titanic double-handed blows, just to be sure. Nothing moved, nothing but them. They waited an anxious few seconds. Still nothing moved.

"Thanks." Deborah sat back on the dirt.

"Well, I did say I help people," Reese panted. "What do you think, two graves?"

"Far apart," she agreed. Then she began to cry.

Reese knew not to touch her. He still had a handkerchief, in the wreckage of the suit he'd put on this morning in Harold's bedroom. He offered it; she grabbed. The crying was steady, more a bleeding off of pressure than outright hysteria. He waited. She stopped by herself.

Tough woman. Kara had had to drug him.

Reese found a steel shovel and a man's work shirt in the back of the farm jeep. He dug a grave while Deborah waited, staring at the fire. Then he went a long way, the other side of a little creek, and buried the head. Deep. With big rocks on top of the dirt.

"You don't have to tell anyone," he said when he got back to the SUV.

Deborah sat in the passenger seat and wrapped the work shirt around herself. "I'm done lying, to Terry at least. I think it's time to tell the truth. See how far that will get us. Don't you think wounds heal faster if they're open?"

_Wounds happen._ "Wounds heal," Reese said. "And I think you're right. Fresh air is good for them."

"Besides." She showed a slightly sick smile. "I might be pregnant."

Reese stared. "You mean you'd ... how could you do that?"

"Once you decide to survive, you can do anything," Deborah said. "I think you know that. And it may be my only chance, until somebody invents cloning."

Reese started the engine. "You had a knife," he said. "The whole time. You could have stopped him."

"I could have tried," Deborah corrected. "And lost the knife, nine chances in ten - he had more fighting experience than anyone else alive. Much better, in my judgment, to wait until he was off guard. Until he thought he'd already won. That way all I had to do was stay alive."

Reese wondered if he could have made that kind of decision in cold blood. But, "you always wanted a long-lived baby. You said so."

"If I did," Deborah said, "I've paid for it in blood. Are you going to tell Terry about these interesting theories?"

"I'm more about hard facts." Reese put the SUV in gear. "He needed killing. He got it. I'm pleased to have been of help."

"Pleased you could be here," Deborah said.

[*]

An ambulance had taken Terry to the local hospital when they got back to the house. Celeste was talking to the police. Reese caught a narrative about domestic violence and assault. Deborah's reappearance was hailed as supporting evidence; she smoothly picked up the thread of the other woman's explanation, with tasteful embellishments. No one was smart enough, or foolhardy enough, to question the children.

Reese thought the jet on the front lawn was the part that really needed explanation, but Harold was handling that. Reese couldn't be sure, but he thought money might have changed hands.

They met, minus the children, in Terry's hospital room (concussion, three broken ribs and a collarbone) early the next morning. Deborah was fresh, neat, and completely healed in new clothes. She sat beside Terry's bed, holding hands, as if dynamite couldn't pry her loose.

Reese wondered what had happened to the bloody shirt. You could get DNA from anything biological, yes? And do anything with it, eventually. Some people had more 'eventually' than others.

"We're staying a while," Terry said. "Celeste can use the help, especially with the new baby coming. It's nice out here, now that ... now that it's safe."

_It's safe as long as nobody goes near that yurt for a few months._ "Good idea," Reese said. "I'm glad things worked out for you." _Good place to raise kids._

"The plane should be off your lawn in the next few days," Harold said. "I've made repair arrangements with the local airport. Is there anything else we can do for you, before we leave?"

"Thank you," Celeste said. "I think you've done ... thank you." She wasn't happy about the wreckage of her life. But she could go forward now, without the monster she'd unwittingly taken to her bed. Without losing her only brother. Reese wondered who would be longer in healing, Celeste or Deborah.

"You're quiet," Harold said when they were outside the hospital. "And I say that in comparison to a truly outstanding background level of taciturnity. Something wrong?"

Reese hadn't shared all his suspicions with Harold. He felt he owed it to Deborah, by their shared pain. "Just thinking. What you said about the two of them being fundamentally incompatible; I think you were wrong. I think they're going to do just fine."


	8. Chapter 8

They returned to New York City by late afternoon, by airline. Harold spent most of the trip working on his laptop. Reese was content to rest. After the surprises and stresses of the past three days, a break was welcome. His eyes kept drifting across to focus on Harold's hands, moving on the keyboard. Harold over all gave the appearance of a well-dressed nonentity, Reese supposed, but he had really beautiful hands.

Stroking John's chest through the thin t-shirt, dipping lower.

Captured with punishing force in John's larger ones. A killer's hands.

_I am not as all right as I thought I was._

John had thought himself recovered after Kara's high-caliber version of therapy. It hadn't affected him with women - another thing she insisted on establishing as soon as possible. And the occasional - all right, routine - nightmares mostly meant he needed more sleep. He was still an effective operative, still a soldier, still a man. If he hadn't happened into this male-male relationship with Harold, he wouldn't have noticed any long term effects at all. _Maybe we could go back, just a work partnership again. Harold said that was more important._

Pretend Harold wouldn't be hurt, wouldn't carry another wound while they went through day after day with number after number. Pretend he hadn't seen love shining in his friend's eyes. God, love for _him_ of all people. How could someone with Harold's good sense possibly do that? Jessica had loved a different man, one with clean hands. Kara had positively cultivated the monster, a fit mate for her own. Zoe kept her heart out of it, and expected the same from him. Only Harold saw everything, knew everything about him, and responded with love anyway.

His chest hurt. Reese crossed his arms across it, tried to make the move seem casual. Backing away was out, then. The question was whether he could, physically could, move forward. He'd been able to satisfy Harold, sort of, two nights ago. Last night...

_They found a hotel, of sorts, not far from the hospital in the nearest town. Harold started touching Reese as soon as they were alone, checking for injuries and trying to brush the blood and dirt off his suit. Reese caught his hands. "I'm fine, Finch. I just need a shower and a change."_

_"This coat is a dead loss," Harold fussed. _

_"I think my boss can afford a new one," Reese said gently._

_That got a weak smile. "I'm sorry. I know, you do this for a living. Go into danger. But being around a person - people - who are so much less vulnerable to damage makes me too aware of how easily you could be hurt."_

_"You have no idea." This was the first moment they'd had alone. John told the story of the complex and multi-stage killing of Will Shearer. It was almost funny, now that it was over. Harold's mood visibly lightened. Then Reese told him why he'd taken the kill shot first thing. "I didn't save her. But she didn't say a damn word to blame me, afterward."_

_"I'd say Dr. Robinson is a very clear thinker," Harold said. "She knew exactly who to blame. And the two of you killed him together. That will help, going forward."_

_"It does." _

_Finch's face twitched in pain. Reese sighed and wrapped his arms around his partner. "It doesn't define you forever after, Harold. No more than any other scar. She's strong. She's in love. She has a purpose in life. Those are all powerful things."_

_"I believe," said Harold Finch, "that I know a thing or two about scars." Reese had to nod. "Some effects stay with you."_

_He'd showered. Harold didn't need to. They shared the one king-sized bed. Harold in neat pajamas, silk again, Reese in underwear and t-shirt. They slept in each other's arms. That level of sensual involvement, at least, Reese enjoyed unreservedly. It kept the nightmares away. But Harold didn't make one move toward further intimacy. Reese ... couldn't. When they woke in the morning, with the normal male morning reactions, they avoided looking at each other at certain angles. Harold spent a long time in the bathroom, even longer than his taste for perfect grooming would account for._

On the airplane, Reese leaned against the side of the headrest and pretended to be asleep. He heard Harold's typing fingers pause. A few seconds, a sigh barely audible over the plane's background noise. The typing started again.

_I am already hurting him._ Reese gritted his teeth. This wasn't his fault. He hadn't asked to be loved.

He didn't ask for a new life, either. A new purpose. That was a free gift, undeserved. Everything he had now was a gift from Harold.

_But he won't take gratitude._ A piece of an old poem wandered through his mind, something about doing the right deed for the wrong reason. Gratitude was poison.

Ingratitude wasn't any better, of course.

_Choose something. Don't just sit here going crazy._ Reese shifted, let his eyes come open. As if he'd barely been asleep. "Finch," he said quietly. "We get in at what, four? Let's leave Bear with Leon a couple more hours, he won't mind. We can go back to my place."

Harold's carefully professional expression softened. "I'd like that."

[*]

The loft was empty, compared to Harold's snug home. Reese usually preferred it that way - clean lines of sight, no place for an intruder to hide. Now he wondered what the place said about him. Empty room, empty mind? Empty heart?

Harold set his one suitcase down just inside the door. He moved forward, limp a little more pronounced after hours in an airline seat, and sat down on the couch near the foot of the bed. "You want to talk," he said mildly. Skipping steps again.

Reese sat down on the nearest corner of the bed. "I think we need to."

Harold bent from the waist, his stiff-necked version of a nod. "I see. I can't pretend this was an unlikely outcome. The heart wants what it wants - and so especially does the body. You can't make yourself feel a discordant attraction, no one can."

Guilt rose like bile in Reese's throat. "It's not that. I like touching you." Much as it had surprised him. "But the other night - I could have hurt you. I'm a mess, Harold." He could see the objections coming. "You know what I am."

"What anyone is. The sum of their choices," Harold said. "Have you given yourself any credit for the choices of the last two years?"

Reese shrugged. "I was a monster for a lot more than two years."

"You were trying to serve a good cause. Obeying authorities you should have been able to trust."

Reese waved it away. "Call it anything you want. My actions were monstrous. You saw that monster in your bed, the other night. I don't think you're safe around him."

"Surely that's my concern." Harold reached for his hand.

Reese withheld it. "Say you are right. Say anything you want about the risks. Where are the rewards? I can get you off, Harold. Like the other night. But you want more than that, don't you? It's your nature to give, it's what you enjoy. I can't take."

"Not on a few minutes' notice," Harold said. "Not on a first try. Is that really the root of this, a fear of depriving me?"

Reese didn't want to look at him. Too much showed in his eyes, and Harold would build false hopes. But too late; he was looking, and Harold was seeing. "It's just the reality."

Harold took his hands, so gently that the monster's reflexes had nothing to fight. "I've found that reality can be curiously malleable," he said softly. "Will you give me another chance? I'm very good at finding a path around obstacles."

John Reese sighed. "What should I do?"

"You react very strongly to feeling out of control in intimate situations," Harold said. "So the question is, what should I do for you? I'm in your hands." He squeezed them.

Reese stood up. Heart pounding. He drew Harold upright too. The blanket permission was intoxicating. He reached out, drew Harold's silk tie loose from his vest. He wound the tie around his fingers, pulled Harold into a light kiss. "See? Handle. These things will kill you in the field."

"I'd better take it off, then." Harold's hands came up.

Reese started with the buttons on the vest. "Also, too many clothes in general. Work's one thing. I can appreciate a professional appearance at work. This is a social occasion."

"You know, I'm starting to get that," Harold murmured.

John worked his way down through the layers. Harold cooperated when he was told to, otherwise stayed passive. He was quiet but ... eager. Almost trembling. Not the kink Reese would have expected, from a high-powered billionaire who'd never had a boss in his adult life. "Would you like help?" Harold said deferentially, when he wore only his glasses.

Reese had a momentary image of simply opening his fly and demanding service. Flinched. Innocents might play at humiliation or even pain; he knew the realities too well. No avenue for the monster to join their games, ever. "Why don't you get in bed. I'll be there in a minute." He headed toward the bathroom.

No pressing need for a shower. But an extra shave, a touch of cologne. Naked, he really looked at his scars instead of ignoring them. The ragged star shape of a gunshot in the shoulder. Long thin knife cuts, shorter wider stab wounds. The twisted, ropey scar on his back. And the gunshots to the lower abdomen from last year, that still twanged with sudden changes in the weather. Harold knew all about those, of course. _I'm a mess, all right_. But this was what he had to offer.

John left the bathroom naked, no point in disguises. Finch was in bed, sitting up toward the middle. "I didn't know what side you prefer," Harold said awkwardly.

He didn't care. Harold, at home, kept his towels in the right-hand bedside table. "Left." Harold made room for him. John lay back on the generous allowance of pillows, the sheets at his waist. Harold's eyes were gleaming with appreciation. "See anything you like?" John teased.

Harold reached out, paused and looked for permission. John smiled a little. Harold lightly traced the nearest scar, the star-gunshot. "I thought I knew," he said. "The files. Even some pictures. It doesn't translate." He laid a light kiss on the injury, moved on to the next nearest.

One-sided, it felt uncomfortably like worship. Reese gathered him into his arms and did a little exploring, too. Harold was scrupulously clean, manicured, rather furry. Sheltered, civilized. John wanted to go on sheltering him. He ran hands down his friend's back, cupped his buttocks. Harold started to copy the gesture - then froze. "I don't know what touches feel good to you."

"Let's try." John pushed the covers down to their knees. Bare, he lay flat on his back. He moved Harold until the smaller man was nestled on his side, at full length against John's body. "Comfortable?"

Harold smiled hesitantly.

"I have to admit, I have a problem with feeling out of control," John whispered. "But let's quantify this." He put his hand around Harold's wrist, mock-forceful. "I feel pretty in control now." He moved the hand to a spot above his lower belly, held it there.

Harold tested the allowable range of motion, stroked lightly. John arched up into the contact. Encouraged, Harold leaned forward a little and delicately touched John's ear with his tongue. He shivered. "It means so much," Harold whispered. "That you trust me, that you let me. It's the most precious gift I've ever had."

"Feels. Good." Reese's voice was unsteady."I'll prove it." He moved Harold's hand a little further down. Down to where his erection stood up against his stomach. He brushed Harold's fingers over the sensitive tip, breathed out.

"May I hold you?" On a sighed _yes_, Harold extended his fingers. Cradled his friend, moving slowly for pleasure as well as caution. The hand on his wrist was urging him on, now.

"I want to kiss you," Harold said. Reese's hand in his hair, guiding him down. Just as gently, because John wasn't sure of Harold's physical limits.

Harold breathed in deeply at his groin, and began to explore. This position had no taint of bad memories. When Harold took him in, John moaned. He was painfully aroused. He forced himself to stay still, let Harold find his own way. His partner noticed the self restraint. Harold raised his head. "Ask me anything." Almost a demand. Harold lowered himself again and licked so lavishly that John momentarily forgot human speech.

"Uh... ah... well, that's an idea." He tried to reach for Harold's groin in return, couldn't get to it. "Get up here. Fair turns." Harold leaned close, face to face, and whispered another suggestion. After the first startle, it sounded ... incredible, actually. And he could be damned certain not to hurt Harold. "How? Can you take weight on your back?"

"Well. Maybe," Harold temporized. Reese translated that as _not at all, but I wish I could_.

"I don't think I have anything here." Cooking oil, maybe.

"Wait." Harold bolted out of bed, still naked, and crouched by his suitcase. He came back with a small bottle. Gel lubricant.

John grinned. "You were planning for the big leagues, weren't you?"

"Hoping."

John grabbed the sides of his head in a deep, demanding kiss. Then he arranged the smaller man on his knees, facing the headboard, clutching for balance. John knelt behind him, belly to back, his erection pressing hard against one of Harold's scars. But Harold tensed when John's hands began to move over his hips. "M-mr. Reese, you may not be familiar with the protocol..."

"Mr. Finch." He sank his teeth lightly into the side of Harold's neck, laved it better with his tongue. "Girls have asses too."

He was reaching around Harold's waist as he spoke; the rough word made Harold's erection jerk upward against his hand. "My, my," he said softly. "Words mean a lot." He cradled, rubbed, felt it swell further. He managed to get the gel bottle open one-handed. "Tell me, Harold." Subtly, gradually John introduced a slick finger. "What are we going to do now?"

"Copulate," Harold gasped.

The finger withdrew; Harold whimpered. "Try again," John said patiently.

"Make love."

That seemed increasingly likely, but Reese kept to his original goal. "What do you want me to do?"

"Fuck." It burst from Harold almost involuntarily; his face and neck turned bright red. John rewarded him with two fingers. "You. Are going. To fuck me." John punctuated the sentence for him with little jabs. "Please," Harold moaned.

John leaned forward and kissed him on the temple. "Of course." He took a few seconds to coat himself with gel, then grasped Harold's hips and thrust.

Harold cried out, sharp pleasure but with a note of pain too. John stopped, absolutely still. Harold tried to push further onto John. "More. Please. It's so good." John eased back, almost all the way out, and slipped in more carefully. "Oh, thank you." Another thrust. "Fuck!"

John tried to go slow but the tight, clinging heat sucked him in. Tried to count in his head, but one to four was too much higher math right now. Reese braced one hand on the wall and kept the other around Harold's cock, moving. A good dose of endorphins had a gratifying effect on Harold's own ability to move easily; they both exploited that. A change of angle made Harold moan. Another change, and he yelped. The small sound was so endearing, so ridiculous. John heard himself snicker. Then, as the inevitable bore down on him like a freight train, laughing out loud.

He was coming and laughing and clutching Harold's penis and then Harold was coming too, with a squeak that kept the laughter going. They toppled with the release of tension, both laughing now. John just managed to land on the bottom. He reached out with both arms, barely stopped Harold from rolling completely off the bed.

They lay gasping, still linked, trying to calm down. "Mr. Reese," Harold said, red-faced, "I am fully prepared to give you a recommendation."

Reese grinned wolfishly, turned his face into the pillow to hide it. "No," Harold was suddenly serious. "Don't. I like it. Do you know, that's the first time?"

Reese blinked. "That you've let somebody..."

"No. Not as such," Harold amended. "The first time I've heard you laugh, ever."

"I laugh sometimes," Reese protested.

"Two years. Not a peep. And that includes hundreds of hours of audio surveillance," Finch said.

"It's your fault. You squeaked." Reese breathed, trying to regain his dignity. And then he wondered what for. "Well. I guess I must be happy," he said.

"That could be it." Harold disengaged, so he could turn in Reese's arms. Laid his head on John's chest. "Don't go," he said, serious and vulnerable as a child.

John buried his fingers in Harold's hair, kissed him on the forehead. "Never," he promised.


End file.
